Question:
vomiting on a regualr basis for no apparent reason-blamed on dumping?

my mom is almost 2 years post op open RNY. 9 months ago she started vomiting for no apparent reason. usually she would eat, be fine, go to bed sleep all night and wake up vomiting for 12-24 hours with one day extra needed just to recover. this was orignally only every couple of weeks, but over the last 9 months has now become a regularity every 4-5 days. she has had an barium xray and colonospcy, both showed her surgery as fine but both missed the kinks/adhesions in her intestine that had created a blockage. that was discovered and fixed in an exploratory suregery 4 weeks ago. since than she has been sick at least 4 more times, 2 of which have been in the last 9 days while being on a clear liquid only diet. it has consisted of chicken bullion, sugar free popsciles and jello, water, and her protein drink called isopure. she had just started making her own chicken stock to try to increase her nutrition and caloreis since she has gone from 280 pd to 115 and her BMI is now 18.6 she has no energy and is tired all the time due to this malnutrition and low body weight. during the 4 days between being sick she can eat anything and will feel fine and begin to regain her strenght. than like clockwork she will mysteriously begin vomiting for 12-24 hours again. her lates bout of vomiting started yesterday afternoon in her surgeons office and she went downhill fast health wise. he admitted her to the hospital and is going to install a pic line in her arm to feed her food and vitamins through it. she has been put on a nothing by mouth order by her surgeon who is convinced this is dumping snydrome. he says her body is in a cycle of dumping regardless of what she eats and if he breaks it she will be fine. he says she is not dying, yet freely admits that he doenst' know what to do. has anyone ever had this, heard of it, have any ideas? desperate to know more and not lose my mom, also wondering if it could be hereditary since she was fine her first year post op also. help    — Melisa M. (posted on October 24, 2003)

October 24, 2003
Melisa, I don't have any ideas but just wanted to let you know my thoughts and prayers are with you and your Mom. I'm sure you must be very worried. I hope the Dr is right about being able to break the cycle. Barb 4/07/03 235/151/130
   — Barbara C.

October 24, 2003
Melisa, I don't have an answer either but I do seem to recall reading somewhere on this web page about several other ladies who had the same experience. You might try searching archives and if you can't find anything, get in touch with one of the administrators of the site. They might be able to help you with information. Please keep us posted on her progress. I will be praying for her.
   —  SCbabe B.

October 25, 2003
What are your mom's bowel habits, any constipation? Does she 'go' everyday? If constipation is a problem, it would take 4 or 5 days without a BM for food to start backing up in the intestine and pouch. This could cause what looks like a 'cycle' of being ok for so many days then having a couple of days of vomiting.
   — mary ann T.

January 28, 2004
Update on my mom: She just had a partial reversal of her RNY today with a different doc than her original one. In my opinion her original doc, Dr. Scholten of Grand Rapids Mi, is not worthy to cut anyones steak let alone do this surgery because his follow up and his office manager Mary Kay are utterly pathetic. They ignored my mom effectively for 8 months and drilled it into her head and emotionally had her convinced that she was totally at fault and that this was all her doing. They refused her an appointment with the doc for at least 7 or 8 months, insisted that she was reduced to just clear liquids and than later to nothing by month which all told was no real food for over TWO MONTHS!!! until she was so malnourished and underweight that it was too dangerous to even do her reversal. to this day Dr Scholten still says that she did not need any reversal yet her family doc said she did, her new surgeon Dr Baker of Grand Rapids Mi said so, and even my surgeon Dr Stephen Pollard suggested that and he only knew of her details second hand with me through email since he is in Leeds UK. This supposed wonderful Dr Scholten about three months ago did an exploratory surgery to try to find out why she was consisitently vomiting all the time for this last year. In his exploratory surgery, he did repair an adhesion or two but failed to notice the two hernias in her bowel. one of which was so big that is had a hole and was going in and out of the bowel and blocking her and making her be sick. the other one that was farther down would have eventually done the same thing later on if it had been left, as well as Dr Baker also repaired many more adhesions and redid the bowel part of her RNY to allow her to start digesting her food much sooner. basically gave her part of her intestine back. Dr Baker said that she might have a bit of nasea and vomiting for a short while until her bowel started to work and as she recovered from this surgery. This was the third surgery that she has had since June of 2003. one was a tummy tuck and repairing of her scars , the other this explorartory one that Scholten did , and the third this one that Dr Baker had to do to fix everything. hopefully this will allow my mohter to be nourished correctly, gain some weight back, get off the feeding tube that she has been on for the last six months, stop vomitign and get her life back. my thoughts are why was this Dr Scholten so reluctant to help my mother? why did he let her go almost 8 months before he would even see her? why did his office woman mary kay insinuate that it was always my mothers fault? and why did this Dr Scholten not see these big herinas that have put my mother and our entire family thorugh h**l for the last year? why would he not help my mother and let her slowly get to the point that even her blood levels were so messed up that another surgeon could not do the surgery for antoher 3months afterwards? we have known that she needed this partial reversal for three months, but had to wait until her health was better and able to support the surgery. I have no respect or trust in Dr Scholten of Grand Rapids, MI and think that he is incompetent to let one of his patients go this kind of torture with no apparent remorse. he had the never to walk into her hospital room twice three months ago, look at her, say he did not know what was wrong, that he did not know what to do, throw his hands up in the air and than walk out. That left my mother with NO HOPE! what sort of a doctor is that?
   — Melisa M.

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